{"id":297107,"date":"2017-03-01T20:04:02","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T19:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/las-vegas-judge-banned-for-life-over-handcuffing-public-defender\/"},"modified":"2017-03-01T20:04:02","modified_gmt":"2017-03-01T19:04:02","slug":"las-vegas-judge-banned-for-life-over-handcuffing-public-defender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/las-vegas-judge-banned-for-life-over-handcuffing-public-defender\/","title":{"rendered":"Las Vegas judge banned for life over handcuffing public defender"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n

Former Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Conrad Hafen has agreed never to hold judicial office in Nevada again, accepting public censure from the disciplinary commission over \u2013 among other things \u2013 ordering a public defender to be handcuffed during a trial.<\/p>\n

\n

Hafen agreed to the decision<\/a> by the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline, admitting he failed to \u201cact at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary;\u201d<\/em> uphold the law and \u201cperform all duties of his judicial office fairly and impartially;\u201d <\/em>and was not \u201cpatient, dignified and courteous to litigants, jurors, witnesses, lawyers, court staff, court officials and others he dealt with in his official capacity.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The commission based their findings on four incidents involving Hafen handing down punishments for contempt of court. Three of the incidents involved Clark County Deputy Public Defender Zohra Bakhtary.<\/p>\n

On two occasions, Bakhtary was present in court when Hafen found a defendant and a material witness in contempt of court and ordered them jailed. On the third occasion, in May 2016, Bakhtary repeatedly interrupted the judge as he tried to rule in the case involving her client.<\/p>\n

According to witnesses interviewed by the commission, Hafen told Bakhtary to \u201cbe quiet\u201d<\/em> and \u2013 when she continued to argue \u2013 ordered a bailiff to handcuff her. The court transcript shows that at the end of the hearing, Hafen ordered the bailiff to \u201cun-cuff Zohra,\u201d<\/em> adding that \u201cI think she\u2019s learned a lesson.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

On this occasion, Hafen did enter a written Order of Contempt of Court, but it was vacated by another judge on August 2. That judge did conclude Bakhtary\u2019s conduct as described in Hafen\u2019s order \u201cmay have qualified as less than professional or even inappropriate behavior,\u201d<\/em> the Committee noted.<\/p>\n

Hafen lost his re-election bid in June 2016 and has agreed to \u201cnot seek, accept or serve in any judicial or adjudicative position or capacity in the future in any jurisdiction in the State of Nevada.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Last week, the Commission publicly reprimanded and fined another Nevada judge $1,000 for \u201cexceeding her jurisdictional authority.\u201d<\/em> Justice of the Peace Melanie Andress-Tobiasson abused her office to do a favor for a personal friend in 2014, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In February 2014, Andress-Tobiasson issued an \u201cex parte\u201d<\/em> ruling in the divorce case involving her friend and Las Vegas attorney Jennifer Bolton, the Commission noted. The ruling compelled a Canadian court to approve Bolton\u2019s divorce from her wife Vivian.<\/p>\n

According to the Commission, however, the order exceeded Andress-Tobiasson\u2019s \u201clawful judicial power\u201d<\/em> as a justice of the peace.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published time: 1 Mar, 2017 18:18 Former Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Conrad Hafen has agreed never to hold judicial office in Nevada again, accepting public censure from the disciplinary commission over \u2013 among other things \u2013 ordering a public defender to be handcuffed during a trial. Hafen agreed to the decision by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":297108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-297107","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}